People We Hear About.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 26, 28 June 1900, Page 30

People We Hear About.

Mr Henry Lawson, the Australian poet, has, (says a New South Wales paper), gone to England, having obtained an appointment worth £200 a year in connection with the Agent-General's office, and a permanent retainer of £100 from a London publishing house. Cardinal Vaughan was 68 on April 15. He is the eldest of a large family, all of whom are celebrated, for eight, brothers aud three sisters have entered the Church, each of the men giving up his estates in favor of the next, and they now belong to the only brother who is not in the priesthood, Colonel Vaughan. The present Lord Chief Justice (Lord Russell of Killowen)i years before he took silk, was sitting in court one morning, when another barrister, leaning across the benches during the hearing of a trial for bigamy, whispered, 'Russell, what's the extreme penalty for bigamy ? ' ' Two mothers-in-law,' replied Russell.' Madame Nevada is a fervent Catholic. While she was singing in Paris in 1834 she was baptized in the church of St. Michael, her godfather being Charles Gounod, the celebrated Catholic musician. Since then she has always been like Modjeska and Anderson, an exemplary Catholic. Two William McKinleys are on Uncle Sam's pay-roll. One draws a salary of $4,166 a month as President, and the other $100 a month as engineer in the Louisville Custom House. There are forty-eight Byrans, and three of them were christened William. There used to be two Grover Clevelands in the public service, but there is only one now. He is assistant farmer at the Fort Peck Indian Agency and receives a salary of $180 a month. Two great Catholic inventors have been signally honored in the United States recently. Holland's submarine boat has been purchased by the government at a cost of £35,000, and the National Academy of Sciences at Washington has awarded to Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, the inventor of the X-ray, the Bernard medal. This medal is presented only once in five years and is given to the person making the most important scientific discovery during that period. Holland and Roentgen are practical Catholics. When Lord Dufferin was Viceroy of India he had a ' shikaree,' or sporting servant, whose special duty was to attend the visitors at the Viceregal Court on their shooting excursions. Returning on a certain occasion from one of these expeditions, the shikaree encountered the Viceroy, who, full of courteous solicitude for hie guest's enjoyment, asked, ' Well, what sort of sport has Lord had 1 ' ' Oh,' replied the scrupulously polite Indian, making a bow, ' the young sahib Bhot divinely, but heaven was very merciful to the birds.' The King of the Belgians is described by those acquainted with his life as the most hardworking man in Europe. While confining himself to his constitutional functions in matters of domestic policy, he has continued his father's work of keeping a personal control over Belgium's foreign relations, which, as every foreign diplomatist would testify, are carried on with most scrupulous regard for punctilio, and with a continuity of policy which Downing street cannot exhibit. Ihe King receives from all parts of the world the very best information drawn from a number of independent sources, and no sovereign is better informed than he of

every move on the increasingly intricate and involved chess-board of the world's policy. The Right Hon. R. J. Seddon. Premier of New Zealand, attained his fifty-fifth birthday on Friday last, and considering that he had only returned a few days from a sea trip for the benefit of his health, his friends and foes (politically speaking, for we believe as a private citizen there are few men more popular) wished him many returns of the day. Mr. Seddon is a Lancashire man, having been born at Eccleston, near St. Helens. At an early age he came out to Victoria, and in 1869 was married to Miss Louisa Jane Spotswood, a lady who has proved a real helpmate to our Premier during the one-and-thirty years of their married life. After a time Mr. Seddon, like many others of our best settlers, was attracted to New Zealand and settled down on the West Coast, where he graduated in publio life as a member of the Westland Provincial Council, Chairman of the Westland County Council, and also as first Mayor of Kumara. Mr. Seddon was returned to the House of Representatives for Hokitika in 1879, and represented Kumara from 1881 to 1890, when he was returned for Westland, which he still represents. He accepted office in the Ballance Ministry in 1891 as Minister of Mines, and became Premier on May 1, 1893, on the death of Mr. Ballance. Mr, Seddon was a prominent figure among the Colonial Premiers during the Queen's Jubilee celebrations in England, and at the time was made a Privy Councillor, and was the recipient of the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Cambridge. Mr. Seddon has at various times held nearly every portfolio, so that he is thoroughly conversant with the working of every Government department. Sir G. M. O'Rorke, who was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives on Thursday afternoon, might be said to have devoted the best part of his life to this line of business, and consequently knows more about Parliamentary procedure than any man in the Southern hemisphere. Sir Maurice, as he is popularly called, first saw the light 70 years ago in County Galway, Ireland, his father being the Rev. John O'Rorke, of Moylough, and his mother a sister of the late Mr. John Dennis, of Benningham House, Toam. At the age of 22 he graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, and in the same year shook the dust of Ireland off his shoes, and started for Australia. Melbourne was his first port of call, but Victoria not coming up to his fancy he turned his eyes towards New Zealand, where he arrived 46 years ago, so that he is a colonist of old standing. In 1857 he began studying Parliamentary procedure by becoming Clerk of the Auckland Provincial Council, and in 1861 got elected to that body for the electorate of Onehunga. Seven years later he was called to the Bar. The partnership between him and the Onehunga constituency lasted for 21 years, until the district was merged into that of Manukau, for which he waa returned uninterruptedly until 1890. He was Speaker of the Auckland Provincial Council from 1865 to 1876, and for a time Deputy-Superintendent of the Province. From 1871 to 1876 he was Chairman of Committees in the House of Representatives, and had a portfolio during a portion of this period. In 1879, during Sir George Grey's administration, he was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, and has held the position ever since with the exception of the period '90-94, when he failed to secure election to the House. This will be the eighth Parliament over which he has presided.